Your website is your hub online. It’s your go-to space on the internet and it should be working for you, but a lot of people reach out to website optimisation experts and web designers with the complaint that their website just isn't working for them. In my experience this is usually down to poor website optimisation of one form or another.
Before they can get to the crux of why your website isn't performing, website optimisation experts like the people you’ll find at Seek Social need to address an even bigger issue: traffic - and quality traffic at that.
Zero traffic means zero leads – even if you convert 100% of nothing, you still have nothing. So one of the most important things for website optimisation experts to focus on when aiming to get people to convert on your website, is firstly to provide it with lots of quality traffic. This is why consistently creating quality content is absolutely key, because that's what will draw those quality people to your website. Once somebody has landed on a piece of content, you need to convert them. That is the second piece of this puzzle and the one that website optimisation experts can help you with.
To increase conversions, website optimisation experts know that you need to match the calls to action associated with those pieces of content or landing pages to the intent that visitors had when they visited your site. If they came to your website because they know that they want your service, then your sales pages need to give them all the information they could possibly need in order for them to make that purchase.
Website optimisation experts know to make that buying process easy too – so they might add a link to your webstore in a prominent place on these landing pages or pieces of content. Not everyone wants to buy right away though, so truly top-notch web optimisation experts like the Seek Social team will have other landing pages and / or content set up for people at other points in the customer journey.
For example – and as a fairly bare-bones but practical setup - you might also want your website optimisation experts to create another set of landing pages aimed at people who are looking to talk to you person-to-person. Instead of pointing these customers to your store, send them to your contact us page – and similarly, you could set up a third set of pages leading to more information about your product for people who are only in the initial stages of their journey.
Another key piece of information that website optimisation experts know is that with people who’ve come to your site looking for information, you'll have more success converting them into a subscriber of some sort first – be it through a mailing list, newsletter or something similar - something that they can opt out of if they decide your services aren’t for them, and that carries no risk.
One lesson that today’s website optimisation experts often learn through experience is that people don’t like the hard sell. I think maybe we all know that deep down, but the difference with website optimisation experts is that they know WHY too. The hard sell just doesn't match the visitor’s search intent… These visitors have come to your website looking for some useful information and straight away you're trying to sell to them. In many cases such a visitor just isn’t ready for this yet and all that the hard sell is going to do is push them away.
The better move is to get them to your website and then leave them to their own devices – let them have a click around, get the lay of the land, navigate around your website a little and find your more sales-y pages organically. If you do you might find that such customers are more willing to buy from you further down the line.
However, if they're not ready to buy just yet, then they're not ready to buy just yet. As website optimisation experts should know however, there is still something you can do to keep them interested and invested in your business. Even if they’re not ready to buy, if we get them onto our email list then all is not lost, as they’ll get reminders about our business and the products we sell direct to their inbox. This ensures that – while we’re not always at the front of their mind, we are likely to come to mind when the time comes that they are ready to buy.